Benitez-Rojo redefines the Caribbean by drawing on history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and non-linear mathematics. His point of departure is chaos theory, which holds that in nature order and disorder are not the antithesis of each other, but rather function as mutually regenerative phenomena. Appropriating this theory as metaphor, Benitez-Rojo argues that within the apparent disorder of the Caribbean—the area's discontinuous land masses, its different colonial histories, ethnic groups, languages, syncretic beliefs, traditions, and politics—there emerges an "island" of order that repeats itself, giving shape to an unexpected and complex sociocultural archipelago.
An Inclusive Litany
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Promotional jacket text for Antonio Benitez Rojo's
The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern
Perspective, published by Duke University Press as part of its
Post-Contemporary Interventions Series: